Archive for month: April, 2018

Leadership structure, office environment, core mission and values, interpersonal relations, team engagement and communication style—these are just some of the many organizational details that shape company culture, something that is becoming more and more important to businesses of all kinds. A strong company culture improves:

Identity of the organization

Employee retention

Corporate image

What’s more, more people rank “workplace well-being” over monetary or “material benefits,” according to the Harvard Business Review—and that well-being is created through a positive company culture.

This is why it’s important to assess company culture, just as you would your finances or sales process. If you’ve never done so before, use these five action-steps to critique—and ultimately improve—the culture of your organization.

Evaluate the Onboarding Process

If your goal is to recruit people who are innovative, competent and dedicated to your mission, then it’s crucial to earn their loyalty and respect in the hiring and onboarding process. If the process is unorganized or they’re waiting around for someone to meet with them, they expect the organization to follow suit.

Consider if your training methods are outdated, monotonous and derivative—such as reading a company manual—or if the approach is personalized, engaging, creative and participatory. New hires are eager to learn their positions and acclimate to the team, but if the onboarding process doesn’t “provide the resources and tools they need to ramp-up, they can end up stagnating,” suggests SaplingHR.

Show a strong company culture from the beginning, with an onboarding process that’s as engaging and interesting as it educational.

Gauge Openness Within Leadership

It’s important that you foster a culture of embracing change, especially if you want to be seen as relevant and accessible to young professionals. A recent headline in Harvard Business Review confirms this, Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate. The authors explain why this can be challenging:

“Innovation demands new behaviors from leaders and employees that are often antithetical to corporate cultures, which are historically focused on operational excellence and efficiency.”

When assessing company culture, determine whether leadership has the ability to be agile and fluid. Are they stuck in the “9-to-5” mindset, which can be stiff and resistant to change? If so, the next question is: how can our culture evolve despite hesitancy among executives? There may be the need for change at the top or a board meeting with those who have a say in the direction of the company.

Look at Incentive Programs (Or Lack There-Of)

The act of praising and incentivizing employees who perform well or provide value to the company is critical—but you don’t have to break the bank with bonus checks that are taxed at an extremely high rate.

Instead, make this aspect of the company culture more personal. Take into account each employee’s interests, lifestyle and hobbies, and find ways to reward them with these personal details in mind. For example, if someone loves cooking, show appreciation with a gift certificate for cooking classes.

Conversely, you can give employees an option for how they want to be recognized with something as simple as gift cards, suggests Jason Mauser, VP of Sales at Hawk Incentives. They’re are ideal for satisfying a “diverse group of recipients” because “they’ll appreciate the ability to make their own decision.”

Observe Team Interactions

The strongest and most sustainable company cultures are forged on relationships and human connections. As you assess culture, analyze the dynamics between co-workers and notice how they communicate or collaborate with each other.

Do they respect one another’s ideas and opinions?

Do they relate on an interpersonal level?

Do they function cohesively as a team?

Does the setting promote a free exchange of dialogue and unique perspectives?

“In a teamwork environment, people understand and believe that thinking, planning, decisions and actions are better when done cooperatively,” suggests Human Resources expert Susan Heathfield in an article for The Balance.

If there aren’t strong team connections, consider adding more team outings to the roster. These give employees a chance to get to know each other outside the stresses of the office, while you show appreciation for their hard work.

Determine Attitudes from Answers

The right questions will elicit the most valuable insights about your company culture. Instead of asking directly about culture, gauge how the current climate is affecting attitudes by asking about the success and challenges of the business. If negativity is coming through in answers, you know a change is needed to steer the ship back toward calmer waters. Certain topics may also elicit the same response company-wide, which can also be telling in terms of how the organization is handling a specific issue or challenge.

The culture of your organization impacts everything from productivity and engagement to retention and growth. While there isn’t a “company culture 101” blue print for every business to follow, you can assess on a regular basis to uncover the unique culture pillars of your organization. Use these tips to do exactly that, slowly creating a company culture that retains top talent and facilitates success.

Are you ready to improve your work culture? Learn how to enhance your culture and increase employee engagement by attending Achievers Customer Experience (ACE) 2018 in Toronto, October 23-24. Get the early bird rate and save $200 off the regular rate today. Buy now here.

Do you have any thoughts on this article? Share your comments below.

About the AuthorJessica Thiefels has been writing for more than 10 years and is currently a professional blogger and freelance writer. She spent the last two years working tirelessly for a small startup, where she learned a lot about running business and being resourceful. She now owns her own business and has been featured on Forbes. She’s also written for StartupNation, Manta, Glassdoor and more. Follow her on Twitter @Jlsander07 or connect on LinkedIn.

When a critical piece of business technology suddenly stops operating properly, your first reaction is to find the problem and get it up and running at full-capacity, as soon as possible.

Yet, when it comes to your most valuable business asset, your employees, many company leaders aren’t as quick to react. Unfortunately, according to a new SHRM report, 38 percent of employees feel overwhelmed by how much they have to get done at work. What’s more, a January 2017 report by Kronos and Future Workplace found that 46 percent of human resources professionals blame burnout for up to half of their staff quitting each year.

The issue of an overwhelmed and burnt-out workforce is nothing new — and that’s the problem. So, we went directly to the source to find out where the disconnect is.

Here’s what employees told us they need from their employers, along with some insights on how you can address those needs to improve employee engagement:

Recognition

When work becomes overwhelming, those who feel unappreciated will disengage even faster, increasing their chances of looking for new work. In fact, 55 percent of North American employees noted a lack of recognition as one of the main reasons they are considering changing jobs, according to our latest report.

Of course, more and better recognition won’t decrease your team’s workload, but it will make them feel appreciated for their contributions and perhaps more motivated to do their best. These shifts can enhance productivity, lightening the burden of an overwhelming workload.

Start engaging

KABOOOM!

This hard-hitting word isn’t just for sound effect. For CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System’s employees, KABOOM, their employee recognition platform, is now a way of life. The CHRISTUS team is dedicated to compassionate care, especially for those who are poor and underserved. With such an intensive mission, it’s easy for employees to feel overwhelmed.

Seeing the need for more employee support, company leaders implemented an online, points-based social recognition solution. Leaders and employees now both celebrate in-the-moment acts of accomplishment and dedication by sharing peers’ specific actions and rewarding them with points. These recognition points accumulate and employees can then use them toward a reward they desire.

The KABOOOM program was a hit for CHRISTUS St. Michael. In fact, the company saw more than a 10 percent increase in employee engagement thanks to this recognition tool.

Strong Employee-to-Work Connection

Passionless employees are disengaged employees.

It’s up to leadership to understand what drives a strong connection between employees, their individual roles, and the company’s mission and goals. Clarifying and solidifying this connection unquestionably increases retention. In fact, according to our previously mentioned report, 74 percent of employees note that making work more interesting and inspiring increases the likelihood that they will stay with an organization.

Start engaging

Go against company norms to change the way employees interact with one another and approach their daily tasks. To form a true connection, many employees need to step out of constraining routines.

Rather than hosting traditional weekly or monthly meetings, encourage employees to keep discussions ongoing via online forums. This approach to communication not only saves time, but also allows employees to stay connected with peers and their work without being interrupted by lengthy, in-person meetings.

Some employees may need a stronger disruption from the daily grind. Consider offering regular employee education hours to help employees step out of their comfort zone and reconnect with their roles, peers, and the company as a whole. During these hours, employees can job shadow a co-worker, take a course, or draw inspiration from a favorite podcast.

Each of these tactics offers a unique way for employees to find a new, interesting take on work.

Flexibility

Your team is full of unique, diverse individuals — and that’s what makes a company successful.

Unfortunately, many employees have limited flexibility when it comes to when and where they work. This constraint can result in a lack of creativity and efficiency – and even a decrease in retention. In fact, according to our report, employees are motivated to stay on board when they have more time off (57 percent) and have the ability to work remotely (55 percent).

Start engaging

Create a unique employee experience to enhance productivity and keep employees from feeling overwhelmed. Start by surveying your team to find out why they’re overwhelmed, when they feel most productive, and where they’d like to work, or what atmosphere increases their innovation.

Based on results, start changing up the employee experience. If employees say they need a more home-like atmosphere, brainstorm as a team to identify ways to make that shift. Additionally, consider offering one or two days a week during which your team can work from wherever they want.

These are great tactics to start with but it’s critical that you don’t stop here.

Continuously survey employees about their connection to work, productivity, motivation, and emotions. Look for trends in employee engagement and compare engagement scores to the days employees are able to work when and how they want. Keep altering and communicating with your team until you find something that works for everyone.

How do you engage your team when they’re feeling overwhelmed? Let us know!

Find out more about your employees’ needs and expectations by downloading our report here.

Are you free in October? Come see me and discover how to increase employee engagement by attending Achievers Customer Experience (ACE) 2018 in Toronto, October 23-24. Get the early bird rate and save $200 off the regular rate today. Buy now here.

Do you have any thoughts on this article? Share your comments below.

About the Author

Dr. Natalie Baumgartner is the Chief Workforce Scientist at Achievers, an employee engagement platform specifically designed to align everyone with business objectives and company values, driven by recognizing shared victories every day.

What types of commuting issues do your workers have? All possible perks and benefits that address those problems (such as public transit vouchers, parking permits, vanpool arrangements, and bike storage) add extra costs to your bottom line – except for one: telecommuting.

On average, businesses save about $11,000 per year for every employee they shift to remote work status for half the week, according to Global Workplace Analytics. At the same time, individual workers save between $2,000 and $7,000 annually. Many companies already realize the cost effectiveness of remote work options, since 37 percent of American workers report telecommuting at least some of the time.

However, as an HR professional you manage people, not budgets. You may wonder what happens to team morale and employee engagement if your workers don’t even have to get out of their pajamas. There is hope on the horizon, because Gallup research finds that employees who spend at least some time working remotely are “more likely to feel engaged in their jobs than those who never work remotely.” Here are 5 management tips for keeping your remote workers aligned and motivated, so you can all benefit from the terrific cost savings offered by telecommuting.

1. Let Workers Control Their Schedules

Once you’ve taken the leap of letting people work remotely, it’s not that big a step to allow them to set their own schedules. Does one employee prefer to work from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m? Except for certain deadlines or teleconferences, that schedule most likely isn’t a problem. You won’t maximize your employees’ well-being from telecommuting if you still require them to clock in every day at 8 a.m.

It’s important to keep in mind that the worker’s home environment is less controlled than an office, and the person may have to break away to deal with a sick child, a runaway pet, someone at the door or a kitchen emergency. The whole attraction of remote work is that it helps people balance the demands on their time.

Dustin Grosse, COO of ClearSlide, offers this advice to managers of remote workers: “Rather than micromanaging when they’re getting the work done, focus on what they’re consistently achieving.” Grosse points out that giving people more control over their time will result in happier and more engaged workers.

2. Work on Building an Active Employee Community

The biggest problem that remote workers encounter is a sense of isolation from the larger group. Your management efforts should be directed toward bringing people together and nurturing employee happiness. One way to do this is to make sure team-members have a chance to talk together. IPEC’s Coaching Excellence emphasizes that emails are not the same thing as talking, and they won’t contribute to a unified work culture.

Today’s remote communications platforms offer sophisticated collaboration tools and vibrant opportunities for conversations that feel like everyone’s in the same room together. Creating an opportunity for peer reward and recognition programs is also a valuable way to build a sense of teamwork. Receiving praise from co-workers is enormously valuable in strengthening employee motivation and building a productive team.

3. Facilitate Whole-Company Meetings

Company culture is key to the identity of your brand, and it suffers when team members are geographically separated. Writing in Entrepreneur, leadership coach Beth Miller notes that “as a company grows it gets harder to keep everyone aligned to the vision while maintaining your culture.” She notes that regular quarterly meetings of the entire organization are beneficial to employee retention and overall productivity. It’s also important to sponsor occasional full-staff retreats or recreational occasions, to make sure all workers identify with their organization as a whole.

While workers may be teleconferencing with their own team-members on a frequent basis, they probably have minimal face time with people in other departments. Employee alignment is encouraged by bringing workers together in person and giving them a say in the direction of the company. An organization’s mission and values only stay alive to the extent that people internalize them.

4. Invest in Professional Development

Offering professional training and development to your remote workers is a substantive way to recognize the value of their contributions, and to keep them engaged and enthusiastic about working for you. Whether through individual mentorships, the chance to attend remote webinars, or tuition assistance for in-depth education, you can keep your telecommuting staff on a solid path to career advancement.

Did you know 40% of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year? Avoid high turnover from remote and non-remote employees by offering valuable professional development and training programs. Also, with a company culture of promotion from within adds power to your employer brand.

5. Recognize Hard Work

While employees may relish the freedom of working late into the night while their favorite pet sleeps on their lap, said pet isn’t going to praise them when they turn in an outstanding report ahead of deadline. Employee rewards and recognition take on a greater sense of importance when workers are geographically distant, since it shows employees their extra effort truly makes a difference. Recent Gallup research shows that employees working remotely are actually more likely to put in extra time on their jobs – probably because they get on a roll and really care about getting the project done well.

Providing your staff an opportunity to work remotely can be a powerful tool to build employee success. Fifty-one percent of workers say they would actually change jobs if they could get one that gave them the option of working from home. It’s clear that companies can gain a competitive edge by offering employees the ability to work remote. The only thing to remember is to practice techniques that will consistently engage remote workers. Start engaging every employee with frequent recognition and rewards. To learn more, access our eBook on How to Make Employee Recognition an Everday Event.

Discover how Shop Direct is engaging 4,700 on and offline employees with their Shine employee recognition program. Thank to Shine and its associated initiatives, Shop Direct’s engagement survey has seen a 17% increase – from 67% in 2010 to world class 84% in 2017. Learn more by downloading Shop Direct’s Case Study.

A company’s mission statement is the driving force behind its company culture. It’s what ignites passion and motivation in employees.

At Achievers, our mission is simple: to change the way the world works. We aspire to do that by aligning everyone with business goals and company values, driven by recognizing shared victories every day. In short, we aim to make success a way of life.

Creating a mission-based culture is crucial for employee — and ultimately, company — success. In fact, according to our latest report, 76 percent of North American employees cited a positive corporate culture as the single most important quality in an employer.

By focusing on your mission company-wide, you open the door for more meaningful employee experiences and a more motivated team.

Here are four steps you can take to instill a mission-based culture at your company:

Start with the employee

Empowering employees to adopt the company’s mission and values as their own is the first step in creating a mission-based culture.

Help your team take this step by encouraging employees to approach their work with an entrepreneurial mindset. Challenge your team to proactively and creatively find solutions to issues the company is facing.

Software companies, for instance, use hackathons to discover new solutions in programming. Leverage this idea to bring people together to accomplish challenges that can have impact throughout the company.

Jumpstart the event by asking employees to note the biggest challenges they or your customers are facing. Next, have them form teams and begin collaborating. Give employees a designated amount of time (traditional hackathons are about 48 hours) to design a program, role, or even software to solve the issues they presented.

The last step is to have employees present their solution and successfully explain how it reinforces the company’s mission. The winning team can then move forward with implementing their solution.

Celebrate your mission

Recognition isn’t just about celebrating your employees. It’s also about celebrating your company’s mission and recognizing those who exemplify it. In doing so, employees are able to see a direct connection between their efforts, the mission statement, and the company culture.

Unfortunately, it seems many companies are missing the recognition mark. In fact, our report also found that 55 percent of North American employees noted a lack of recognition and engagement as the main reasons behind wanting to change jobs.

At Achievers, we maintain a strong, positive culture by tying our communication and employee recognition efforts to employees’ work. For example, on a quarterly basis, our company comes together for a rewards and recognition (R&R) celebrations.

We place a lot of importance on giving our employees a voice and making it known throughout the company. We are not only proud of our employees, but also we value them and want to demonstrate that during the R&R celebration.

Recognitions are shared company-wide, highlighting examples of how our employees make a difference both internally and with our customers. No accomplishment is too small. They are meaningful, impactful, and push the company’s mission forward.

Be transparent during the good and the bad

Transparency allows employees to clearly see how their efforts impact overall organizational goals. To give employees a greater sense of transparency, let your company’s mission and values shine through in every situation — both good and bad.

When something great happens, like the promotion of a team member, celebrate it publicly. Explain what this employee did to earn a promotion and how their actions and attitude positively reflect the company’s mission. This way, employees can see the company mission in action and learn and grow from it.

While not as easy to do, it’s equally important to share the downsides of the job with employees. If you lose a client, for instance, be open and honest with your team about why this happened. Most importantly, use this time to inspire employees and unite them behind your mission. By discussing the issue as a team, you and the company can learn from this experience and help prevent similar issues in the future.

Stay connected

Your company and employees are constantly evolving. Even if your mission stays the same, the connections and values employees have will change. Because each employee is unique, you need to stay connected to their emotions and relationship with the company.

To accomplish this, arm your managers with the tools they need to listen to their employees, as well as offer recognition, on a consistent basis.

Technology that allows your managers to get a pulse on their direct reports on a daily basis will provide more insight into accomplishments and challenges than an annual or quarterly survey. More importantly, the data managers receive is in real-time, which allows them to take immediate action.

Giving your managers the tools they need to listen and respond to their direct reports in a personalized way brings it full-circle and back to the company mission. These practices will give leaders the opportunity to understand what matters to their employees, react in the moment, and redirect employees to a more engaged, mission-based culture.

Find out more about your employees’ needs and expectations by downloading our report here.

Are you free in October? Come see me and discover how to increase employee engagement by attending Achievers Customer Experience (ACE) 2018 in Toronto, October 23-24. Get the early bird rate and save $200 off the regular rate today. Buy now here.

Do you have any thoughts on this article? Share your comments below.

About the AuthorDiane Scheidler is the Head of HR at Achievers, an employee engagement platform specifically designed to align everyone with business objectives and company values, driven by recognizing shared victories every day.

The title of “manager” makes it sound like your entire responsibility is simply keeping track of your employees and maximizing their performance. Of course you want to elicit high-level productivity from your team, but your fastest route to success is to offer something back to the people who work for you. The most successful managers enter into a mentoring, or “coaching,” relationship with their direct reports. Here’s a look at why mentoring is so important, together with some best practice tips for putting together a mentorship program that really works.

Mentoring Builds Employee Alignment

Your employees have ambitions for where they want their careers to go, and it’s to your company’s benefit if the person doesn’t need to job-hop in order to realize those ambitions. Daimler Trucks has instituted a proactive mentoring plan throughout its entire 4,000 employee U.S. workforce as part of its leadership succession planning. Suz Hahn, Daimler’s Architect of Learning and Development, states that: “Daimler realizes mentoring is key to the health of our organization.” The company finds that employees who gain new skills become more engaged, and are also eager to spread their knowledge and best practices throughout the entire company.

Millennials Expect and Appreciate Mentoring

Today, more than one in three of your workers are millennials (people between the ages of 18 and 34), and this generation makes up the largest percentage of the U.S. workforce. These are the employees with the freshest skills and the keenest awareness of marketplace trends, and it’s clearly in your best interest to meet their needs. There are real differences in what this age group expects from their workplace, however, and 53 percent of managers say that it’s difficult to find and retain millennial employees. Providing mentorship is your most effective tool for attracting and retaining this demographic: A 2016 Deloitte millennial survey notes that of those respondents who plan to stay with their current company for the next five years, 68 percent say they have a mentor. To get down to exact nitty-gritty of these expectations, the millennials surveyed state that in an ideal week, 3.6 hours would be spent receiving coaching and mentoring.

Focus on Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge Transfer (sometimes shortened to KT) mentoring is described by Willis Towers Watson in their cover story for Workspan. The authors of this overview note that KT mentoring arose as a solution to the fact that fewer than half of the nation’s workers feel their employers are doing a good job of retaining a quality workforce. Clearly a new approach to employee retention is needed, and KT mentoring fills that need by introducing new standards of clarity and structure into the transfer of knowledge within a company.

Put Structure in Your Mentoring

Classic workplace mentoring is an informal relationship that’s very open-ended. Even the choice of which two people are paired together is usually made on a casual basis of who likes whom, and sometimes the very best mentee candidates can be overlooked. The mentor provides ad hoc guidance, slipping it in haphazardly when schedules allow. The informal nature of the exchange means that the mentee probably isn’t giving feedback to their mentor on how helpful he or she is, and mentoring techniques are rarely examined. Mentoring is considered to be a personal favor, and is delivered with that tone. While this informality can be appealing, giving the mentee a sense of being taken into the mentor’s confidence, the lack of structure has some obvious downsides. Here’s how KT mentoring is different:

KT mentoring approaches the process from a structured point of view. The topics to be covered are identified ahead of time, with emphasis being placed on those subjects that will be most beneficial to the organization. Selection of mentors and mentees are made on the basis of learning preferences, generational diversity and personality profiles. The number of candidates for mentorship is made as large as it can be throughout the organization. The mentor and mentee agree on time frames and knowledge goals, so that it’s clear what information will be shared and when this sharing will happen. Formal tools for giving feedback are included in the process, enabling the mentorship interaction to be continually fine-tuned. Towers Watson’s overview of their KT mentorship process emphasizes that its purpose is to sustain high levels of employee engagement.

Make Mentoring Part of Your Company Culture

For any mentorship program to be successful, your organization’s leadership has to believe in the idea. High-quality mentorship requires an investment of time and resources, but forward-thinking leaders recognize that it yields a worthwhile return in productivity and employee happiness. A Corporate Executive Board survey shows the growing recognition that structured mentorship programs are worth the effort: 25 percent of U.S. companies now host some type of formal mentorship program, as compared with only 4 or 5 percent a decade ago.

Mentorship Is About Building Relationships

Leadership coach, Luis Velasquez, notes that, “Mentoring is one method that can tip the scales on employee engagement by fostering lasting relationships among employees, promoting career development, and facilitating the transfer of knowledge within a company.” Using mentorship effectively as a tool to strengthen the organization is one of today’s key management skills. Plus, sharing what you’ve learned with an eager young protege can be a highly gratifying process.

There is an international employee engagement crisis. According to a Gallup survey, 85% of the worldwide workforce feels disengaged. On the bright side, this issue can be prevented with the use of initiatives that recognize employees the right way. This finding offers an opportunity for employers to address the need to add value to their employee’s work experience. After all, employees spend over 40 hours per week in the workplace making it practically a second home. You want to make sure they look forward to coming to work every day.

The good news is we have the power to change the culture of an organization from the executive team to frontline employees. Focusing on employee engagement and delivering a strong company culture ultimately impacts customer happiness, employee productivity and your bottom line.

Start with the 20:60:20 Model

What is the 20-60-20 model and how does it apply to HR? The 20-60-20 model should be applied when a company reviews its current human resources strategy. Overall, it means 20% of employees will accept new changes, 60% of employees will be neutral about change, and 20% will be resistant to accepting change in the organization. The good news is 60% of employees will be open to providing feedback and participate in employee engagement initiatives. As a result, the remaining will follow if the new programs are receptive and relatable to employees.

Focus on Career Development Programs

A reason why employees feel disengaged at work is that there is no effort on developing the skills of workers. Employees want career development opportunities to get that next promotion, potentially transfer to a new department where their talents can be fully utilized or receive in-depth feedback on their performance. I appreciate how my manager one time went out of the way to teach me about (ATS) Applicant Tracking Systems used by human resources to track words in a resume to select candidates for an interview. I once worked at an organization with a career development program that I found extremely impactful. Some of my favorite aspects of the career development program were the following:

Career Plan: Include realistic action steps to complete employee goals, education or activities.

Career Tools: Offer the right tools for employees, whether it be full access to online educational videos or other niche services that can help them succeed.

Department Cross-Over Opportunities: Open up the opportunity for employees to assist other departments outside of their own; encourage their curiosity and interest.

Provide a Successful Onboarding Experience

The Society for Human Resource Management stated, “new employees who attended a structured orientation program were 69 percent more likely to remain at the company for up to three years.”

Most companies have a dull onboarding program with a new hire filling out forms on the first day. As the month’s pass, the employee must figure out the company culture on their often. It can be an isolating experience which increases turnover rates of new hires in the first 90 days of employment. Here is a list of onboarding tips I recently discovered:

Share the history of the company

Send employment forms electronically before the employees first day

Introduce the new hire to executives and management

Sit the employee near the desk of a potential mentor

When a new employee goes home, the conversation about your company to family and friends should be positive because it will be beneficial for your community to think highly of the company from an employment perspective.

Get Executives Involved

The Muse stated, “90% of leaders think an engagement strategy have an impact on business success but barely 25% of them have a strategy.” Human resources and management can be excited about employee engagement, but if executives are disinterested or not visible, it will not help a company long term. Executive involvement means the CEO attending a work event, and introducing themselves to every employee. It includes executives attending team meetings to introduce themselves to frontline staff. If there is an extracurricular activity being offered to employees outside of work, it might be a good idea to encourage your executives to participate; this increases trust in leadership and enhances the employee experience.

When it comes to the employee experience, don’t let your employees simply receive documentation, sign forms and receive employee benefits. Instead, be an organization that embraces work culture from the top down.

Ask for Feedback from Employees

As an employer, think of employees as a customer; create engagement programs that support their career goals with options to improve their health. Most onboarding strategies include providing a survey asking new hires what they want and how their onboarding experience was. Make sure to ask for feedback from employees – they provide the answer on how to effectively boost employee engagement at your organization. Here are a few questions to ask them:

What do you want to see more at the workplace?

Do you feel valued at work and how can we improve?

How do you want to be recognized and rewarded?

Does your manager support your career goals?

What events or employee programs do you recommend?

How can we be better?

The questions should be open-ended to receive clear responses and encourage honest feedback without limitations.

Recognize Your Employees

Never forget to make your employees a top priority. One way to show your appreciation for employees is through frequent recognition and rewards. When you recognize your employees more, you will reap in the benefits of employee engagement. After all, 69% of employees cited Recognition and Rewards as a motivation to stay at their current job in 2018. Appreciate your employees on a daily basis and watch employee engagement rise.

About the Author
Makeda Waterman is an online media journalist of 4 years with blog features on CNBC Make It., Huffington Post, Glassdoor.com, Elite Daily, Fast Company, among others. She is passionate about helping people improve the quality of their career.